Companies fined over Hatfield crash

The high court today imposed record penalties on companies involved in the Hatfield train crash five years ago.

Engineering giant Balfour Beatty was fined £10m and Network Rail £3.5m for breaking safety rules before the crash, in which four people were killed.

The companies were ordered to pay £300,000 each in legal costs.

Mr Justice Mackay described Balfour Beatty's breaches of the Health and Safety Act as "one of the worst examples of sustained industrial negligence".

Earlier this month, charges against four men accused of safety breaches over Hatfield were dropped.

Last month, five Balfour Beatty and Network Rail bosses were cleared of corporate manslaughter on the direction of the judge. The jury cleared them of health and safety breaches.

But Network Rail - the company formed in 2002 to succeed Railtrack - was convicted of breaching the Health and Safety Act.

Balfour Beatty admitted breaching safety rules when the corporate manslaughter charge was thrown out. However, it did not accept all the facts of the case the prosecution had outlined against it.

"Hatfield was a tragedy, and our thoughts remain with the bereaved families and with those injured and otherwise affected by it," the company said in a statement.

"Balfour Beatty Rail Infrastructure Services, in entering its plea of guilty, accepted inadequacies in its patrolling and inspection services, for which it apologises.

"It is, however, clear that the accident arose as a result of a systematic failure of the industry as a whole. At no stage did BBRIS work outside the industry standards on patrolling and inspection as they were constituted before the accident."

In the trial, the jury heard how the 117mph crash of a London King's Cross to Leeds train on October 17 2000 had been caused by a cracked section of track. The crash injured 102 people.

A backlog of essential work had been allowed to accumulate and the cracked rail had been identified for repair 21 months earlier, the jury heard.

Prosecutors said the accident had been the result of a "cavalier approach" to safety.

Railtrack was saddled with a £733m bill for repairs and compensation to train-operating companies, pushing it into a financial crisis. Network Rail took over the running of the rail system after Railtrack's collapse.

The heaviest penalty to be imposed in the English courts until today was the £2m fine imposed on Thames Trains as a result of the 1999 Paddington rail crash.

Thames had pleaded guilty to two health and safety-related charges.

This summer, the Scottish courts imposed a £15m fine on Transco, the gas utility company, after a leaking gas main led to an explosion that killed four people.

The Safe Trains Action Group welcomed the severity of the fines imposed today.

Carol Bell, the organisation's vice chair, said: "We have said that there have to be bigger, swingeing fines for companies, and it's good to see that there have been in this case."

However, Ms Bell - who was injured in the 1997 Southall train crash, which claimed seven lives - said she was disappointed that prosecutions for manslaughter and corporate manslaughter had failed in this case and in other previous cases.

"It's terrible that people can be in charge of companies involved in these crashes and get away with it," she said.

"If they knew they could go to jail, maybe they would take safety more seriously. I would support any change in the corporate manslaughter laws. There has been plenty of talk about changing them, but nothing seems to be happening."